


and i’ll move slow

by teenageraccoon



Series: this time-bound conscience [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Natasha’s psychological expertise comes from experience, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Conditioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 01:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21499696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenageraccoon/pseuds/teenageraccoon
Summary: “He fought, hard,” she says. “It took them years to get to him, and he fought like hell. That says something, a lot, about him and who he was and who he is, because you said his name on the bridge and he fought through right then and there to know who you were. He’s strong and resilient and I bet you that hasn’t changed.”It still doesn’t feel like much of a silver lining.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: this time-bound conscience [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517654
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	and i’ll move slow

The morning after he wakes up on the bank of the Potomac, Stark tells him that there’s a comfortable apartment waiting for him in Brooklyn. A year’s rent is covered, and the apartment is fully furnished but also fully adjustable, allowing Steve to curate it to his taste. Stark actually uses the word ‘curate’, which makes Steve snort, then roll his eyes, then wonder if it’s Pepper emailing him from Tony’s address. He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it was. But he accepts the apartment with the full yet unspoken intention of repaying Stark for both the expenses and effort and packs his few personal things from the DC condo. Everything else is replaceable, and after what happened with the Triskelion, he wants to get out of there as quickly as he can.

He’s back a week later for Fury’s sendoff and his unofficial debriefing for an organization whose future is entirely unknown.

Natasha hands him the file in the cemetery with a warning about unraveling threads he may not want to pull on. He smiles and he thanks her and he resolutely ignores her words of wisdom even with her expertise behind them. His flight touches down at LaGuardia Airport six hours later.

That night, while the file sits on the dining room table next to the empty box of pasta that he didn’t bother throwing away after cooking it, he gets a text. _Tell me if anything’s unclear_ , it says, _because I had JARVIS translate it from Russian to English, but it may not be perfect. Don’t let Stark hear that. And no, he hasn’t read the file._ And then, immediately after, _Let me know when *you* read it and I’ll show you how to find the silver lining in it. It’s there, if you know where to look._

Meaning the unknown number is Natasha’s, he deduces from typing style combined with the fact that she’s the only one continuously changing phone numbers and she is, to the extent of his knowledge, the only one aside from Fury (and apparently JARVIS, of whom Steve still doesn’t know the extent of his capabilities to know things, at least in the way that humans do) who’s aware of the contents of the file. Sam had respectfully looked away when Steve opened it in the cemetery and waited till he’d closed it again to refocus on him and plan their next move.

Natasha’s reminder of the file’s existence is…unwelcome. He unsurprisingly hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it for the ten hours he’s had it. He doesn’t resent her for it, can’t hold it against her, but he has yet to open the file folder and read through its contents, and he finds himself in no rush to do so–which is significantly more surprising.

He reads her text messages, powers off his phone, and tries to sleep.

It comes, eventually, but it’s not fitful. Upon waking, can’t remember what he dreamed about, and he doesn’t want to try to.

That morning, he sits down at his dining room table with a cup of coffee from the Starbucks a few blocks away and opens the file that’s been sitting there. The first few pages are precursory notes on Bucky akin to those of a doctor; height, weight, age and blood type and some more in-depth details about his arm, the metal one they fitted him with.

Not light reading, but nothing he can’t get through.

The other pages, not so much.

There’s not much about the knowledge of the serum itself—that’d been stolen and Steve isn’t sure they ever learned its components—but there’s plenty about the effects of it. Of what someone could do, could take, after having been invented with the serum. Of the upper bounds of pain and starvation and sleeplessness and Steve wonders how the fuck they managed to find all that out without killing Bucky. Then it goes into more depth.

Talks about insubordinate behavior and the subsequent behavioral corrections (torture, he thinks, because that’s what it is), talks about planned deployments and mission reports and whether or not they intended to wipe his memories before sending him back into the field.

Those pages he fights to get through. Ignores the coffee because all he wants to do is put his fist through a wall, or maybe kill the bastards that are now either dead or imprisoned.

Sometimes he thinks that he can read pride, or maybe glee, about what’s been done, and he wants nothing more than to have been the one to put the bullet through Pierce’s skull after giving him a taste of his own medicine.

(There’s nothing on the procedures for either the memory erasure or the cryogenics. Just that they were used as punishment, to dominate and control and shape his best friend into something that Hydra didn’t even consider human. He wonders if Bucky considers himself to be human, and then wishes he hadn’t.)

He closes the file without finishing reading and gets changed. Stark Tower is good because it allows him a gym where even if he’s recognized, he won’t be approached, and being approached isn't something he thinks he can handle right now.

He destroys no less than six punching bags before he’s able to text Natasha. He’s being short, borderline rude, ( _What *exactly* is the silver lining in any of that, Romanoff??_ ), and hates himself for it, but can’t bring himself to word it any differently.

 _I’ll meet you_ , comes the response, _better to talk in person. Are you at your apt?_ He tells her the tower, gets a _Good_ in reply to that, and arranges to meet her at the lobby at one pm.

They end up getting gyros from the same Middle Eastern place they got shawarma post-Chitauri and sit at the counter, both eating in silence for a few minutes until Natasha clears her throat in a way that makes Steve know they’re done ignoring the elephant in the room.

“You want to know the silver lining,” she says, wasting no time. “Is that he fought. Hard. You read it, you read what they did. Some of that is because Zola and Pierce, whoever else, were fucking sick, yeah. But it took them years to get to him, and he fought like hell. That says something, a _lot_ , about him and who he was and who he _is_ , because you said his name on the bridge and he fought through right then and there to know who you were. He’s strong and resilient and I bet you that hasn’t changed.”

She’s silent, letting him take it in and process. He’s thankful for that, but it still doesn’t feel like much of a silver lining.

He says as much and Natasha laughs, not unkindly.

“No,” she agrees, “it doesn’t feel like a silver lining. But I think it means you have hope for the future, getting him back. Physically and otherwise. Mentally, spiritually, you choose the words, but I do think you have hope.” And knowing Natasha, her background, some of what she’s been through, makes it a little easier for him to hear those words and believe them.

“So how do I get him back?” he asks a few minutes later. Trying to sound calm and collected and pretty sure he’s failing miserably and that Natasha can tell. She, thankfully, doesn’t point out out.

“I think,” Natasha says, now sounding very careful, “that you’re going to have to let him come to you. This is his first taste of independence in seventy years, and if it looks to him like you’re trying to take that away, to infringe on it, or to force him back into captivity, then I think he’ll kill you.” Steve feels like she includes the ‘I think’ solely for his benefit, but he doesn’t interrupt. She continues on, in the cold, detached manner that lets Steve know she’s speaking from experience. “I don’t think he’ll mean to, or recognize what he’s done until he’s done it, but after everything he fought through to get free, if he thinks you’re there to take that away from him? I think that he’s going to kill you.” Steve swallows and nods. He doesn’t doubt her for a second, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear.

“I don’t think–” he starts, and then changes tact. “He could’ve let me drown in the river. And he didn’t. That has to mean something.”

“It does, Steve,” Natasha says with a tinge of sadness. “ _He_ made the decision to not let you drown, not anyone else. He’s relearning agency, he’s relearning how to make decisions, he’s relearning how to exist in the world. But if he doesn’t _remember_ having that before, then he’s going to be desperate to cling to what he’s got now, and I think you chasing him down is…too close to toeing the line for it to be safe. For either of you.”

Steve, however reluctantly, admits that she’s got a strong point. But that doesn’t leave him with very much to work with, and his contemplation from earlier pops back into his mind.

“You didn’t want to meet me at my apartment,” he states. “Why?” He already suspects the answer, but wants to hear the confirmation come from Natasha.

“You’re going to have to let him come to you,” she repeats. “Which means he’s going to need to trust that you’re safe for him. Having a stranger in your apartment is as far from safe as it can get, Steve.” Steve opens his mouth to say something, but Natasha keeps talking as if she doesn’t even see it. “And no, you’re not a stranger; I don’t know if he remembers you, actively, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be aware that you have a significance in his life. In what he knows of it, at least.”

“…Okay,” Steve says. He’s still unsure of how it’ll play out in practice versus theory, but what she’s saying makes sense. “So to get him to come back?”

“You let him see that you’re safe and you let him start to believe it on his own and then, once he comes back to you, you keep on proving it to him.” Steve swallows thickly, and asks the question he’s using all his will not to dwell on.

“What if he _doesn’t_ come back?” Natasha gives him an incredulous look and Steve can tell that her next exhale of breath is just barely a sigh.

“You’re the one thing he knows, Steve. His memory is shot, but he saved you at the river for a reason, and I bet you that the reason is because he knows you. Might not know _who_ you are, but he knows you, or at least knows he knows you.” It takes Steve the better part of a minute to parse out what she’s saying, but once he manages to, it makes sense. Which means that, once again, she’s proven herself correct. “Come on,” she says, and grants him a much needed change of topic. “I’m meeting Barton in twenty, you can walk me.”

He does. Their conversation is entirely inane, just petty gossip about Stark and his tower and whether or not Pepper has managed to successfully keep him in line recently along with her three thousand other tasks, and it’s not a conversation that Steve is proud of, but he’s just about willing to accept any conversation that’s not ‘hey, what’s your plan for rehabilitating your amnesiac assassin best friend, provided he doesn’t kill you first?’. Because, believe it or not, that conversation becomes very grating very quickly.

They run out of gossip a block before they reach Natasha’s current hotel, but Steve doesn’t mind the silence. He leaves her at the steps and she gives him a hug, a kiss on the cheek the way she did at the cemetery, and as he turns to make his way home, she says, “Steve? Don’t worry, he’ll come back to you. It’s only a matter of time. And try not to ruminate on it in solitude.”

If anyone knows what they’re talking about, it’d be Natasha. That doesn’t stop him from praying with every fiber of his being, please, _please_ let her be right. He doesn’t think he can afford her being wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr [here](http://teenageraccoon.tumblr.com)  
> 


End file.
